Friday, February 26, 2016

Birthday Thoughts

Today would have been my older and only brother's 60th birthday - so today, just a story of family, a brother and sister and memories of childhood.
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On one of two very recent trips to visit Dad, an Honor Flight was arriving as I did. How wonderful to see the crowds of people who stood up and clapped as these brave Veterans were wheeled past, and the line of officers that shook their hands and thanked them for their service. I had brought a tiny little point and shoot out on this trip and got one discreet picture, even as a tear ran down my cheek.

Good people honor their Veterans as we are taught to honor our parents. That is why my vacations the last 20 years have been back and forth to Dad's house to care for him and my step-mom when she had Alzheimer's, My big brother, who lived two hours away, made sure the house stayed in good condition, with both of us making sure there was enough money in his account to handle it's upkeep (you can't see it from this angle but Bro and I got him one of those recliners that lifts him up to a standing position). I handled cooking and cleaning, canning and freezing, so meals when I was gone were easy. Clothes were mended and gutters were cleaned

My last trip was just to check on him as he's been hospitalized two times in the last two weeks.He's home now where he wants to be with a home health aide there for a few hours every morning to help him up and around and in the afternoon and evening, helping him into bed after making him a hot meal. He might be there another year, it might be a day-- it's in God's hands at this point.

My family is from Montana. but they moved West, but for a small home back there that ended up a rental and an occasional vacation stop. Dad's house is the one I grew up in, my room virtually unchanged from childhood. When I came home this last time, he did something that Big Bro always did for me, leave a couple of balloons tied to one of my stuffed animals (yes, they are still in my room) on the bed.

My bedroom looks just the same as when I was a teen, with the rainbows painted when I was 14 our out of the horrid colored 70's leftover paint (I do NOT want to remember which room the aqua one was, but I remember the awful salmon color as my childhood bedroom paint scheme). The rest of the house has been repainted, a kitchen fire a couple of years ago when someone Dad hired to help with the cleaning and cooking (instead of the licensed and bonded one I had hired because "this one is cheaper", even though I was the one paying for it) set fire to the place while out smoking and talking on the phone while something was cooking on high near flammables.

Though, other than the fresh paint on most of the walls, it looks just the same. Around the house, are always things that make me smile. Big Bro's frog. The photo frames he made as he was dying and put up all over the house, reminding himself each day of the life he had lived, and how lucky he was.

Something else had changed - the bathroom.

In our house we had what was known as the Girl's Bathroom and the Boy's bathroom, which of course, now would be politically incorrect. The "Girl's bathroom" was where Mom and I could take our time with hair and curlers and what not and the boy's bathroom was just a half bath that was painted blue and decorated with a little ceramic skunk Mom made named Stinky. The tub and the shower though were in the "Girl's bathroom"

Everything in there was pink, walls, towels, shower curtain, etc. On the wall were these ceramic tropical fish Mom made (she was really into crafts) that were a Daddy and Mommy tropical fish, with two little baby fish. They were stuck to the wall with adhesive stuff, Mom and baby fish following the Daddy fish with little ceramic bubbles that would perch above them as if rising to the surface. I was the smallest fish, there at the end of the little line of swimming fish. Big Bro used to take the bubbles from our two fish and position them so they'd be coming out of the little sister fish's butt.

Big Brothers are like that.

Being in that house, 50 years later, brings back so many memories. The houses on this block were all were erected in the 50's, sprawling across what used to be farm fields, rich soil that lay at the foothills of the mountains, small squares of cedar and brick, laying in the shadows of tall unaxed trees and the log train that serenaded a little girl to sleep.

The neighborhood back then was different then the dynamics of a neighborhood now. Families moved in and didn't move out. There weren't foreclosures popping up every few houses, and kids tended to live in the same home from the time they came home from the hospital until they went off to the lumber mills or college. It was a small mill town, most of the kids ended up there, drawn by the lure of a log mill wage at 18 that seemed like a fortune, until you saw the brutal tax on your bones and your spirit after 40 years of it. Only a few of us made our way out beyond those snow capped mountains.

We knew all of our neighbors, the other Mom's home during the day, welcoming in the noise and the occasional dirty footprint onto linoleum. We knew which Mom made the best chocolate chip cookie, and which one would be as stern a taskmaster as our own Mom when it came to playing quietly in the house. (Look it's NOT a hallway, it's a Hot Wheels racetrack and I needed 6 extra kids as a pit crew).

The town's only grocery was across a two lane 50 mph roadway that lead to the mountains. We were NOT allowed across it on our bikes without a parent, even if there was four way traffic light at the intersection with the grocery and the gas station. There was no even THINKING of breaking that rule. We knew the consequences of being reckless, and it was not a slap on the wrist or a taxpayer funded 'stimulus'. Outside of that, there were all kinds of places to roam, and in summer time we were pretty much outdoors from breakfast to supper, no helmets, no sunscreen if we could help it, no hand sanitizer, no shin guards.

We'd ride up and down the block, usually playing Man From Uncle (I always got to be Ilya Kuryakin whom I'm sure started out his Secret Agent stuff, like I, with training wheels). We'd play soldier and spy or cowboys and Indians in our back yard where Dad and my favorite Uncle, an engineer, built a cool A-frame play house for me. I could usually squirrel away some of the Hostess products from the kitchen, inside it's structure for the Indians to run raids on. I was ready, I had my cereal box Colt six-shooter and a BUS (back-up slingshot).

But, like the examples of our parents, and the lessons of TV, which did not yet involve drugs and spandex, we were careful with our weapons, even if they were plastic. Besides, should those rules be broken, we knew who the Sheriff in town was, and it was Mom, even if she gave up her actual Deputy Sheriff badge and an 18 year career in Law Enforcement, when they adopted both of us.

Those were glorious days. We'd drink from the hose or come in for KoolAid, and a hug, soda pop being something not in a budget of a single income family, reserved for a treat while on vacation to my Aunt and Uncle's ranch. We'd count marbles, candy money and coup, and we'd roam as far as we could without crossing that highway.

Many of the houses had fences, many did not, but there was an alleyway of grass that ran behind our house where we could run covert missions into a neighbor's place. The ones without kids were off limits, we were taught to respect others' property, but we did raid one retired couple's little decorative pond at the back corner of their place for the occasional frog which we'd use to scare some sissy kid, and then return it safely. (Seriously, if I ever give you a shoe box with holes in it with a big bow on top, don't open it).

On Saturdays, the cars came out to be washed, and sometimes waxed. I could earn spending money for candy by washing the station wagon for Dad, and gladly did so, learning early the correlation between labor and putting food on the table. Our Dads would mow, and our Moms would get groceries and bake cookies for the week.

In the late afternoon, Dad would curl up with some sports on TV for a couple of hours, his only break in a long week of work and family. Mom would go to her needlework or crafts while the neighborhood kids continued to play those glorious summer games that were relegated to single days off during the school year for us. For Sunday was a day of worship, of rest, reading, board games and music, not raids on a local fort or trying to blow something up in the garage.

Now when I go back, so much of the area has changed I see houses down the street where there's no money to repair a roof, moss taking over, plants growing in the gutter, but there's a new fishing boat and Hummer in the driveway of the very modest home. On others, there are bars on the front doors of the homes we'd run up to to ring the doorbell on Halloween, without any adult in trail.

But Dad's house - it's virtually unchanged from my childhood, but for the apple tree that had to be cut down

I love my Dad, as I think we all do our parents, even when we don't see eye to eye with them, both sides occasionally causing hurt even to someone they love dearly. Such is human nature. But I also admire him even as I tease him a little that he has a picture of Ronald Reagan riding a horse on his desk.

So I do all I can to keep some continuity in his life. Having buried two wives and two children, a daughter they lost in their late 20's and my brother, Dad needs that sense of stability, even if the martini making duties have been inherited by my husband.

But one thing that did need a change, and he'd tried to do it, but just made a mess with some paint. The ever so pink bathroom. It's the one Dad uses most of the time, as it has the tub that we added bars and a chair too. It's also larger and easier to navigate in. But it was still pink.
So while he was in away, it was updated to be a little less "girly"

Nothing fancy, a light greyish-blue paint, a new shower curtain, and grey towels to match the tile. The fish, long since living at my house, were replaced by an old, old photo of of our childhood vacation stomping ground, and Dad's favorite memories.

Everything else but for the bathroom was left alone. Dad asked that everything else, including my brothers things, be left exactly where they are, until he too, is gone. Though, that empty spot where Bro's recliner in the family room had been, is painful to look at (it had to be taken to the dump, being soiled from where they brought my brother in from where he collapsed.)

The span of that empty space is as wide as our grief..

I wish my brother been here long enough to see it, but I'm glad I wrote The Book of Barkley. I know some people looked at it and said "oh, another dog book" or "I don't have a dog" and then click past the page to the more exciting genres. But it's more than a book about a dog, it's about my brother and I, how our lives grew together, then apart, then back again, into that house where there were so many memories. Barkley was simply the change that made this lonely road warrior look at my life and my faith in a whole different manner, so that the end days, when they came, were sweetened by the joy that we have shared, and the joy that awaits us, together in heaven.

As I left the house that last time, I gave my Dad a big hug at the front door, told him I loved him, went to the car, climbed in and started the engine, then got out and ran back to him and gave him one last hug. For it might well be the last one. We are not related by blood but we are, by life lived, commitment honored and memories made. He touched my check, with work weary, dry, thin hands, an old man's fingers, yet still his hands, my Daddy's hands, touching my rosy cheek where the strength of his blood still flows within me, will flow, even after his long journey back to his reward.

I looked at the house as I left it that last time, all of Big Bro's things on the wall. All of those memories seemed to condense in it, as if the house alone were the source of them, shining from it from that big picture window, glimpsed just for a second as my rental car pulls away, like that 10 point whitetail you see the split second after he sees you, when he's already gone, even as you yearn for him to return.

9 comments:

Hari OMWe share a generation and memories that match; having a father for whom we siblings are doing as you have done, our battle is to get him to allow us to do anything. All we can do is give them something of what they gave us. Which can never be enough... YAM xx

A visit down the memories of youth and growing up sure can stir emotions. ANd it is a very odd thing to be away from it for a long period of time and then return. These things are the validation that our memories are correct and at one time were real. Happy Heavenly Birthday to your brother!

Cookies mum here: I absolutely LOVE reading your posts. Even though I grew up in an industrial part of Hackney in London (our "backyard was a factory and the whole area had factories), our childhood are similar in that we were allowed to run around and play without parents setting up "play dates" for us. Thanks again for a tear jerker post -- and I am not being sarcastic -- it's just that your posts bring back memories,

Thanks fur sharing your memories. Mommy remembers the kitchen in her old house was a bright orange color. Brighter than your rainbow orange. I guess way back when, the brighter the color scheme, the better. Lol. Oh and we cracked up about the bubbles coming out of little fishes butt. Yeah, thats what brothers do.

If I close my eyes I can see everything you described... many thanks for such a wonderful post... I had a tear in my eye for the apple tree, I'm crazy I know :o) Happy Birthday to your Brother... I wish he could read this post....

Your life growing up sounds very similar to mine. We were respectful to the neighbors, played outside playing no matter what the weather, and didn't have helmets, shin guards, and lawyers line up in case we got a boo boo! I remember skidding out on some gravel and got some nasty scraped knees. (I still have the scars from that!) It was nobody's fault but my own. It wasn't the playground management's fault for having gravel around the park drinking fountain. What ever happened between now and then?

Welcome to The Book of Barkley. This blog was created for more memories of Barkley as well as updates on Abby the Senior rescue Lab,who we adopted in 2014.

Stop in and say hello. 100% of book sales are donated to animal rescue organizations across the U.S. and Canada and Search Dog Foundation. If you have a non-profit animal organization and would like autographed copies of any of my three books for auction fundraisers or a blog post featuring your organization please contact me at cliodna58@gmail.com

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About Barkley and His Mom

My Mom started this blog due to requests from friends who wanted a place to go for stories of her furry friend Barkley that weren't in the book and stories of my rescue and new life in my furever home. She donates all of the proceeds from her writing to animal rescue and groups that train search and rescue and service dogs but that's OK, as she still gives me lots of dog treats and toys.

The Book of Barkley is Mom's first memoir. She used to be a jet pilot for somebody's Uncle but now has a PhD in something involving science and bad guys, and a career in federal service doing something with secret squirrels and some good guys. Additional mayhem is provided by my Dad and our 100-year-old "fixer upper" Mission Bungalow.

Her second memoir "Saving Grace - A Story of Adoption" was published in April of 2015". Her next book - "Small Town Roads" will be out before Christmas 2016 and then she's taking some time off to spend time with her 96-year-old WWII Veteran Dad who adopted her fairly late in life.

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No one who has ever had a dog as a companion will be able to read The Book of Barkley: Love and Life through the Eyes of a Labrador Retriever by L. B. Johnson with dry eyes.

Johnson tells the story of her life, from childhood to adulthood, from the perspective of her relationship with Barkley, a Lab that she got when he was just a stubborn ball of fur who ‘selected’ her when she viewed the litter of which he was a part. Her descriptions of adjusting to Barkley’s presence in her life, and how this helped her come to terms with and understand her past and learn to take life a day at a time on her own terms will resonate profoundly with anyone who has fallen in love with a dog and had to learn to live with its loss.

This is a story of unconditional love and acceptance, the kind that asks nothing but love in return. As Johnson and Barkley forge bonds of trust and understanding, she also strengthens her human relationships.

This is much more than a mere memoir – it is a story of life and how to live it, and how we humans can learn to live our lives better if we’d only learn to live it like a dog does. The author uses language well, with descriptions of animals, people, and places so vivid you feel that you can feel the textures, smell the odors (pleasant and otherwise) and hear the whining of a puppy needing to go out to do its business. Life can be sad or happy, and the author takes us through it all – a trip that you won’t regret taking. A five-star book that definitely merits the Awesome Indies Seal of Excellence

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